122849-hypothetically-speaking
Content ---- ---- ---- Protostar does not discriminate between the two ;). Items that would be available via either choice and would not cause the game to become unfair is the main discussion topic. I kind of wish we could have turbocharged hoverboards like the ones in the initial hoverboard spoiler :'(, the scooty puff Jr.'s we have now are too tame. +1 to anyone who gets the reference. | |} ---- ---- ---- I am sorry but I don't buy the "this is not a free to play discussion" disclaimer. specially when you noted in another thread. And then run off to make a thread about what to include in a cash shop. Why not be straight forward and name the thread for what it is 'what would you like to see in a cash shop" instead of trying to find a round about way of discussing F2P/B2P? | |} ---- WoW is pay to play and has a mount shop. I have not bought anything from the mount shop yet in WoW, but I missed the Holiday sale where the Fey Dragon was 12.50$. God... that mount looks smexy. I would absolutely drop 25$ for an Iron Horde wolf as well: If Wildstar had mounts that looked like this, and they were gated behind $$$, I would pay for them. I mean, what's the point of making more and more money IRL if you can't use them to pay for things that show how much disposable income you have IRL? | |} ---- That may be so but that discussion is for that thread alone. Any thread that is about F2P always derails into the same topic and same arguments. I want to try and make the thread as constructive and effective as possible so I don't want to begin talking about "why do we even need a cash shop", "Cash shop=pay to win" etc. There is no need for it hence I have tried to be vague in that aspect while drawing focus on the main topic to discuss :). Pretty sure people are smart enough to see through it anyway without having to point it out and link a discussion in a different thread. Back on topic. Carbine, please make a Scooty Puff Jr. type mount. It would be hilarious. | |} ---- Those holiday sells, I only wished they had put up the Grinning Reaver for sell :( Then again it's new...then again you can't fly in Draenor >.> | |} ---- Fair enough. For the sake of discussion then: -Gender Change -Faction Change -Race Change -Path Change -Class Change That's about it. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Cash shop isn't necessarily free to play. Again, WoW has a cash shop and its the strongest MMO on the market. | |} ---- ---- Scientist :-) . | |} ---- ---- Except it totally is, isn't it? Otherwise, you wouldn't have used an euphemism for "cash shop" and you would have made it very, very clear that this shop wouldn't use real life money or an out-of-game currency. So my thoughts are this: if Carbine adds any type of quality of life improvement to a cash shop (sorry, I'm not using your euphemism just to make it sounds better), I'll complain loudly because those improvements should be available for all players as a base or at least as an in-game achievement: paid with in-game currency, or as a reward for playing the game. Besides, remember we have CREDD. People can already buy a lot of things with real world money using that. Cash -> CREDD -> Platinum. Then you can use that platinum to buy things off the Broker, or trade it with other players in exchange of carries through though (group) content or whatever. It's not like Carbine is going to monitor that. | |} ---- ---- inflates the market | |} ---- ---- Just make it gold instead of inventing (yet another) currency. | |} ---- STOP THE DISCUSSION AND LISTEN UP! Okay, I'll take the OP on principle, because while it does seem like an F2P/B2P discussion, it's not necessarily. Hear me out, because I have stated before (and will state again) how Carbine and NCSoft can put together an ethical cash shop that doesn't *cupcake* off subscribers or CREDD users, but still generates extra revenue! Some of the new players may not really remember this, but the original idea in Wildstar's post-launch development was to drop monthly content patches (smaller than the ones we have now, but still monthly). We were also meant to get "rewards", so once a month we'd get rewarded for our subscriptions. Not only that, but there have been other items which some of you may not be aware of. The Piglet housing plug (that spaceship house was a reward), the Highwayman's costume set (growing rarer as more new players who never had it show up), the beret (which was a reward for everyone around for Sabotage). These things are exclusive gifts... and they're now either on your account or sitting in a dusty lockup somewhere. I don't know, maybe some have a low percentage drop from somewhere. Now, aside from the deluxe edition of the game (which is essentially a prize package for paying 15 dollars), there isn't anything locked behind a pay wall. However, these items are even worse, they're locked behind a wall never to be seen again! My buddy Travis wants Seeger's Highwayman's boots so bad, but can't have them or get them because he wasn't here for headstart. Sucks, doesn't it? And here's where a cash shop can, in effect, be an all-around win-win situation. Maybe the patches are better when they're quarterly, not monthly. That doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't get monthly (or even fortnightly) subscription rewards. And there is also no reason why those rewards shouldn't end up on a cash shop so that a player who wasn't subbed at that time could have them. So that's the essence my proposal, a way for us all to win out of this. Have Carbine designate a person or persons (or hire new ones, if it's successful) to continually design new stuff. In a F2P or B2P schematic, these people would essentially be working on this kind of thing anyway. As soon as they're done, the items go onto a cash shop. And, true to F2P and B2P models, this stuff can be anything. Cool new mounts, housing FABkits, costumes, deeds, name it. About the only thing that won't work are random consumables like dye collections (though dyes work) or EXP, REP, et al buffs (though I've mentioned that if there is a free option, those players could get EXP, REP, et al debuffs and need to purchase flasks to make them subscriber-CREDD caliber gains). The reason these won't work is because once they are released all current subscribers and CREDD users get that item as a subscription reward. So think about that. Look at how many people win: -People who are coming to the game later (or who lapsed for a while) and weren't around to be given those rewards can essentially pay a bit extra and get them; they are no longer completely unattainable. Travis can get his Highwayman's Boots. -Players who are and always will be current in their subscription will get a steady stream of awesome new stuff that will always be available to them, just as thanks for being current, making their investments more worth it on a regular basis. They never have to pay more than they're paying. -NCSoft and Carbine not only have a good reason to keep people subscribed and current, but also can essentially make back some money from people for months that they weren't technically playing. In a way, if the sabotage beret is put up on the shop for a few dollars and someone new to the game buys it, they essentially have paid for a bit of development done in August, a month they weren't even technically there for. I think NCSoft and Carbine should absolutely install a cash shop like this. The only losers are people who want those rewards to literally be exclusive, and I don't think that forms a large majority. As long as nothing exclusive ever ends up on the shop that doesn't go to the current subscribers, we have nothing to be angry about. In any other arrangement, something gives. Right now, NCSoft and Carbine aren't getting that money, new players can't get some of the cool stuff older players have, and we older players aren't getting subscription rewards because they aren't seen as moneymakers. Installing a more traditional and predatory cash shop or other system will either make subscribers pay more to get the stuff they already paid to develop. But in this proposed system? Maybe the rewards for NCSoft and Carbine aren't as potentially high, but combine this system with the subcription and CREDD system already in place, where the cash shop is literally a recuperative system for new or lapsed players and the things made for it act as an incentive to get people to pay 15 dollars a month or buy the CREDD equivalent? That is an optimal system, every single person gains from it. There are, literally, no losers if the system is implemented as I've suggested it. Get on that, Carbine. And don't get on anything more predatory than that. You won't make any logical enemies with that kind of cash shop. | |} ---- ---- You got to ask yourself this: If the lure of loyalty perks is as shallow as this, is there a lure at all, or is loyalty to a product not worth rewarding. Would in fact a full blown cash-shop make better money than entizing customers to stay? At least from every business I've looked at, it's MUCH cheaper retaining customers than getting new ones. | |} ---- I would seriously be irritated to have incentives to spend MORE money that I am already putting into this game. It feels scummy and manipulative to me, and I wouldn't like it at all. I wouldn't leave over a WoW style cash shop being added, but I wouldn't like it. And if they started putting such a thing in my face and trying to extract money above my sub with advertising, I would consider quitting. | |} ---- Actually somewhat untrue. WoW has, as we've seen, hovered around having 10 million players according to the reports I've heard, give or take. They also, a while ago, advertised they'd had over 100 million players. That's a huge amount of turnaround even in the best known MMORPG on the planet. I assume less than 1% of their active players were there during launch and have stayed the entire length of development. So MMORPGs actually do get a lot of new business and also a lot of returning players. The entire point of the system as I enumerated it is that there are no losers. There are no subscribers or CREDD users learning that they will have to pay more money to get things that they're getting free right now. There are no new players who go to a house with a Piglet and ask how to get it, and the answer is, simply, "You can't anymore." And even if NCSoft doesn't make as MUCH money from the cash shop alone, all the money coming from it is supplementary to the subscription rather than going full-blown F2P/B2P and having to make all their money from the cash shop. All parties come out ahead. All parties win. And this scales. NCSoft and Carbine have every reason to make the subscription rewards as excellent as possible instead of trying to convince us that we don't "need" them the way F2P companies tend to have to mollify their customers to feel less fleeced. Since all current players get them, we would only be benefiting if we got entire Expedition FABkits as subscription rewards, whole costume sets, new mounts. And the better those are, the more new players will want to get them. It's fair, it has none of the stink and stigma of even WoW's cash shop (much less a shop like SWTORs), it carries none of the PR crap that comes with other cash shop models, it encourages players to be subscribed every single month since the monthly content patches were a bust (again, under this system, Carbine is under no compunction to make the items things you can take or leave, they'd do nothing but help their cause with subscriptions if they made those rewards as awesome as possible), and new players won't have those sub rewards forever locked away because they just weren't playing when they were released. Under this system, there are simply no losers. | |} ---- ---- Much less than 1% if you believe the outcry that happened when they sent a loyalty WoW action figure to people that had been with them (almost) uninterrupted during the 10 years lol. Should Travis also be allowed to buy that from a cash shop? | |} ---- Why not? My character's name is inscribed on a stone monument in Iceland from my EVE days, that doesn't make me feel any happier. I mean, if someone would like to personally speak up and say they would never want to have any new player be able to purchase the Highwayman's costume set, the time would be now. I don't personally argue against hypothetical people that may or may not exist. | |} ---- It undermines the value of those rewards. I know in World of Warcraft the ability to do mog runs tarnishes the value of previous armor sets, to the point where you can only really trust time-locked mounts or titles to capture the awe of a player who was ahead of the curve. Granted, loyalty rewards aren't really on the same level personally since I believe anyone can pay a sub so the exclusivity isn't as meaningful to me, but to some people loyalty rewards matter on the same level. | |} ---- Well, that's why I'm asking for the people who do personally care. I don't think the actual number of people who would turn their nose up at the idea of someone having their "exclusive" rewards is that high precisely because of what you said. I seriously doubt, especially in Wildstar, that people would find that necessarily that offensive. I've certainly never seen someone break out their highwayman's costume in order to show people how long they've been in the game. So I'm asking for anyone who actually does personally have a problem with it to say so. They'd be the only people who would potentially "lose", if you can call getting regular rewards for being current in your subscription for no extra money at the cost of those rewards no longer being attainable by anyone else a loss. | |} ---- The game is still young. Who knows where things will be in 5 years? | |} ---- ---- If they implement the system I recommended in the next few months, it won't be a problem in five years. It might be a long-term issue, but it's a short-term problem if those items go on the block. And, again, as I said, I haven't seen anyone yet that is personally against it. | |} ---- I meant that five years down the road people might have a greater concern who actual veterans of the game are. | |} ---- I played WoW pretty reliably for over a decade, I can't say I ever personally noticed when someone had been around a long time. Five years down the road, I'm sure it'll be fairly obvious who was here at launch. No one else will know what Evindra even was. | |} ---- ---- I really like that idea! So many great skinned items I've had drop that I purely want for the look and nothing else. | |} ---- ----